by Eric Beetner
“I know.” She sniffed again, pushed the hair out of her face. “It’s just hard.”
“I get it. It’s not your job.”
She looked at Dale and thought he might look like he wanted to hug her, to help ease the pain. She wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t want him to, but he looked like it was a last resort move. If he absolutely had to do it, he would.
“I’ll be fine.”
He split the difference and put a hand on her knee, about eye level for him on the steps below her. “We’re going to make it out of here. Only a few more floors to go. If all goes well, we won’t even see another person.”
“And if all doesn’t go well?”
Dale hefted the gun in his hand. “We fight like hell until we make it out. We didn’t start this.”
Lauren scoffed. “Didn’t I? Chasing a goddamn story. Wanting to bring my father down. Christ, what a spoiled fucking brat I am.”
“No. You want to do the right thing, you just went about it the wrong way.” He patted her knee, took his hand back. “Welcome to the club.”
Behind Dale, the door to the eleventh floor opened. He spun to see a black nose at the end of a long snout lead the way out the door. The rest of the German shepherd nosed around the door and immediately started growling and snapping its jaws. The handler held a short leash and peered around the steel door following the dog’s alert.
Lauren raised her gun, startled, and her feet slipped. She fell and hit the step with her butt and bounced. A shot exploded out of her gun. She bounced down a step and fired another shot. As she slid down two more steps, she involuntarily squeezed off two more rounds. By the time she hit the landing on her backside, the dog handler was dead, four holes in his chest and the dog stood snarling at the end of a slack leash.
Dale stood in a crouch, both arms out, but remaining still. He locked eyes with the dog who didn’t flinch at the gunfire.
Lauren stifled a squeal as she sat eye to teeth with the trained attack dog. It remained in place, waiting for a command that would never come with his handler slumped against the wall behind him. Lauren scuttled back and quickly hit the bottom step with her back. She lifted her gun again, no idea if there were any shots left.
Dale’s words were louder and almost scarier than the dog’s bark. “Don’t you dare shoot that fucking dog.”
The gun trembled in Lauren’s hand. She turned her eyes to Dale who remained locked on the shepherd, his own gun in his hand, but aiming at the wall.
“But…but…”
“Don’t do it. I won’t let you shoot the dog.” The dog kept up a low growl as it shifted its weight from front paw to front paw, regarding Dale as an equal but not yet ready to submit to him as a master. “What’s on this floor?”
“More dorms.” Lauren tried to swallow but the back of her throat was dry.
“Inside.”
“Me?”
“Inside. Go.” Dale held the gaze of the dog by some primitive hypnosis. The shepherd let a thin line of drool slide out the side of its mouth. He continued to bare his canines at them, eager for the attack command, but disciplined enough to remain still until he heard it.
Lauren started to stand. Dale kept his voice calm now, his volume low. “Slowly.” Lauren slowed her movements. She got to her feet and waited, like the dog in front of her, for more commands.
The sudden line in the sand startled Dale. Why draw the line here? Why draw it at all? After what he’d done, before today and including the last twenty minutes, a dead dog wouldn’t go noticed by a police report, Lauren’s article, the karma police or St. Peter. But something about seeing the dog brought into a fight that wasn’t his put Dale in a forgiving mood. The damn dog couldn’t help who it was. And Dale knew none of this was its fault. Right then, that was enough.
Dale reached out his gun hand and put two fingers on the open door. The dead man’s foot had propped it open for them and Dale pulled it wide. He moved his feet incrementally forward, moving in front of Lauren and closer to the dog.
“Stay behind me until I say so.”
He got no answer from Lauren except her slow movement. Keeping a hand on the door, Dale moved his body so his arm was extended and made a bridge over the dog. His midsection was close enough now he felt the hot breath of the angry dog through his shirt. The dog pivoted in place, tracking Dale’s movements with his muzzle. For the first time the dog noticed his dead handler. For a brief moment, the dog stopped snarling and sniffed the air above the dead man.
Dale stepped over the corpse’s leg and had a clear shot through the door. The hallway was empty, the man and his dog a lone patrol.
“Okay, come around me. Go on in.”
Lauren moved like she held an open jug of nitroglycerin. She gladly kept Dale’s body between her and the dog. With one big step over the dead man’s hips, she was inside the hallway. Dale eased his body around and the dog went with him. He’d maneuvered himself so the shepherd was facing the door now, all four paws on the outside of the threshold, and Dale was clear to make it inside, but the door wouldn’t close with a dead guy in the way.
Dale stepped over him and set both feet on the interior side of the door, the dog’s growling ratcheting up in pitch as if he knew what came next.
He whispered his instructions to Lauren. “You get his legs and I’ll get the top half.”
They each put a foot gently on the man, ready to push. “One. Two. Three.”
Dale kicked at the man’s hips, pitching his body forward onto the landing. Lauren kicked at his knee, pushing his legs out of the way of the door. Dale pulled the steel door shut as the dog barked loudly and leapt. He felt the impact on the door as the dog crashed into it, locked in the stairwell.
Dale exhaled. “Okay, now what?”
Lauren looked down the darkened hallway, doors on either side. “I guess we go to the north stairwell now.”
“I guess we do.”
CHAPTER 9
For a change Lewis’ hand rested a moment on the doorknob to Mayor O’Brien’s office. Normally he would walk right in, tell the mayor how it was going to be—what to say, who to say it to—and know with full confidence O’Brien would comply like a well-trained dog. This time, though, Lewis was about to engage on a much tougher sell, but with a much higher reward.
He pushed into the room. “She knows.”
“Knows what?”
“A lot.”
O’Brien sank into his chair. He acted like his daughter had just walked in on him screwing the maid. She knew his back-room dealings, his payouts and bribes. She knew the worst thing she could—the truth.
“How?”
Lewis paced the floor. “I don’t know.” He played it for anger. A betrayal by the only offspring of a powerful man. He faked thinking through every option, shaking his head as if throwing out ideas too heartless or too impossible.
“Jesus, Lewis, she’s gonna sink me. My own daughter.”
They’d discussed it many times—O’Brien hadn’t harbored high hopes for his reelection, but he didn’t plan on jail time or a public shaming. The way the polls had been going lately, when this came to light—the realization of all the fears and accusations, even the most paranoid sounding indictments of his opponents—he’d be run out of town on a rail. Maybe they’d bring back tarring and feathering. It had been a hundred and fifty years since a good old-fashioned lynching in this town. That used to be wholesome family entertainment in the town square.
Lewis began his pitch. “The article’s not written yet.”
“But she knows, you said. Everything?”
“Everything. Or near enough.” He had to make her research sound more definitive than it was. She still had a lot to prove, but Lewis didn’t want to give her the chance.
“My God, and she’s with Tat right now. What’s he gonna do to her when he finds out?”
Perfect. The blubbering of an emotionally stunted man-child. Exactly the Mayor O’Brien
he counted on to come to this party.
“It could end badly for her, sir. We talked about that possibility.”
O’Brien composed himself before he spilled any tears. It went unspoken between them that the tears were for his imploded career, not the potential threat to his daughter, the backstabbing bitch.
“I know, I know.” O’Brien wiped at his eyes to erase all evidence of a near-miss cry.
“But maybe…” Lewis stopped his pacing, squared up to his boss. “The possibility is our strongest asset right now.”
O’Brien waited in silence. Waited for instructions. Lewis would know. He’d know how to fix it, to make it all better.
“What if…” Lewis brought a finger to his lips as if he were figuring it all out right then, not an hour ago in Lauren’s apartment while jacking off to her bikini pictures. “If this hostage situation ended badly for her.” Careful not to say her name. Downplay the human element. “You have to admit, it would be the best possible outcome for us.”
Lewis waited for his words to penetrate the thick, dyed-hair skull of the mayor. Wait for it, wait for it.
“What the hell does that mean?” Anger in his tone, bristling at the suggestion.
“I’m just saying,” Downplay, we’re just spitballin’ here. “If she is a victim of the vicious men you’re trying to stop, it puts a personal spin on your commitment to justice that we cannot buy.”
“A victim? What’s that mean, victim?”
“Mr. Mayor.” Say it. Pull off the Band-Aid. “If Lauren dies in this, we get a ten-point bump in the polls. Maybe fifteen. No one can compete with the sympathy vote, and your rock-solid commitment to the cause is clear.”
O’Brien stood, slowly. He walked in a daze over to the liquor cabinet and poured a short scotch. He gave Lewis another slack-jawed glance, listening to the words echo in his head. He downed the drink in one, then turned and fast-balled the tumbler at Lewis.
Lewis curled up like a school girl at a rubber spider. The glass sailed past him and exploded against the baseboard next to the sofa.
“That’s my goddamn daughter.”
Lewis heard the strong words but listened to the weak voice saying them. Daylight. “Tell me I’m wrong, sir.”
With a hard face, O’Brien let the tears overflow his eyelids. Lewis countered with a stern look of his own. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
The reality of it, that Lewis was exactly right, depressed Mayor O’Brien more than the thought of his little girl dying. The idea that this plan made so much damn sense drove hot spikes through his head. And the razor-bladed truth that tore at his heart, is that he wasn’t saying no.
CHAPTER 11
Decisions, decisions. Dahlia swung the car over three lanes as she changed her mind. The boy beside her with the broken nose moaned while the boy in the back seat with a nine-inch gash in his arm squeaked a high-pitched note of pain.
Kipp’s voice came out a cotton-filled mumble. “Where are you taking us?”
Dahlia had been driving toward the hospital. Russ in the back had leaked a lot of blood and some intern was going to get serious practice on their sutures, and Kipp needed his nose set so he could breathe properly again. She wondered if the same parents who bought him all that guitar gear and microphones would pony up for a nose job in a year when the sharp left turn his new nose took wouldn’t be presentable to college admissions officers.
“We’re going to the police station.” Dahlia decided the precinct would get all three of them the help they wanted. She could find someone who knew Dale, get some answers, and maybe get him on the phone. Only a few blocks away from the carnage on her street and she slowed the car. The threat was over for now.
The piece of shit Volvo was easy to follow. The rust blotches and badly patched dents gave the finish a skin cancer patina and every time they started up from a stop light, the car belched a puff of black smoke as if it wanted to be followed.
He hung back almost two full blocks and still tracked the car without trouble. He’d put in the call to Tat to ask for advice since this thing was getting out of hand. Nobody answered.
T tried not to read too much into it. Probably busy with that dude who came by uninvited and stirred shit up so this errand was needed in the first place. With no instructions from the head office, T was on his own. He didn’t want to hurt the kids. He’d been in a band when he was sixteen. A hip-hop thing, no guitars. And they never played any gigs, but they had fun at a few house parties rapping over other people’s beats.
The old lady was regrettable too, but necessary. With both kids already injured, he could overpower them and grab her with little problem. He ought to break their fucking knees or something for the abuse they gave him with a bass guitar to the head and all that, but the injuries they’d already sustained were good enough. T wasn’t a sadist or anything. Just a man with a job to do.
Right at the moment, he decided to pull them over and get the job done.
Damn her, she pulled into a fucking police station.
Dahlia parked and escorted the boys to the front door. They got a crooked look from a guy leaving the building, probably thinking she was a cop bringing in a new collar that she’d worked over damn well.
Inside, she dropped the boys off and explained the very basics to the officer at the desk. A crazy man had attacked her in her home. She ran and he followed and attacked the whole garage full of teens. She left out any whys about it because she didn’t know.
She made sure to drop Dale’s name and she was escorted into a waiting room. Dahlia stopped off to say goodbye to the boys. “Thanks for trying to defend me. You may have saved my life.”
Kipp smiled, his nose swollen and clogged with dried blood. “No problem, Mrs. Burnett.” When he showed his teeth, they were stained red.
“Thanks for getting us out of there.” Russ’ face was pinched in a permanent wince as even the slightest whiff of air sent jolts of pain through all the exposed nerves in his arm.
It was a good bet that one or both of them were trying to sleep with one or both of the girls from the couch. As they walked away, Dahlia couldn’t feel too bad about their ordeal because she knew damn well those boys were going to trade their story and their scars for some serious action in the coming weeks.
Dahlia sat and the officer stopped before closing the door after him as he left. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Some water would be great.” She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until he mentioned it, then she felt like a gallon wouldn’t be enough and she knew she was in for one flimsy paper cup. Better than nothing.
He nodded and stepped out, closing her in the room. She sat in the silence for a moment before realizing she was in an interrogation room. God, she thought, what terrible things have happened in here?
T hung up the phone, his plan now in place. He sat parked across the street from the station, watching. As long as he had his cell phone out, he might as well try Tat again.
He dialed and it rang, but voicemail picked it up, Tat’s message nothing but a huge bass drop from a song T didn’t recognize.
Weird to get no answer on Tat’s direct line, but nothing he could do about it. Tat had other guys to deal with whatever went down at the building. His job was out here, and it should be moving along nicely right now.
He dropped the car in gear and drove around to the back of the station.
There was a light knock at the door and Dahlia realized she’d drifted into a daydream.
“Come in.”
A different man entered than had dropped her off. He didn’t have any water.
“Mrs. Burnett?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me, please.”
She didn’t like how his words echoed the man at her door this morning, but this was a cop. His badge hung on his chest right in front of her. And she was in a police station. Nothing could happen to her here.
10TH FLOOR
Dale put o
ut a hand to stop Lauren. He held a finger to his lips. Shhhhh. They were three steps from the tenth-floor landing and he smelled smoke.
He pointed down and Lauren followed where his finger aimed. They both leaned gently over the railing and saw the top of the man’s head. He was down on eight, it looked like. Still, they couldn’t go any farther without him hearing them.
The man brought the cigarette to his mouth and soon after a cloud enveloped his head as he exhaled, and the smoke drifted up the stairwell. The barrel of an AR-15 slung over his shoulder pointed straight up.
Dale leaned in close to Lauren’s ear. “What’s on this floor?”
“Tat built an apartment for his mom.”
Dale pulled back, gave her a raised eyebrow. She shrugged. He looked at the door, the heavy push bar entry. Heavy and loud. They needed to distract the man downstairs. Lauren watched as Dale searched the barren surroundings for some tool to create a distraction. Bare concrete steps, cinder-block walls, grey metal handrails. Nothing of use.
Dale patted his pockets, then fished in the tiny front pocket on the right side of his jeans nobody ever seemed to use except him. He brought out a quarter from the tiny change pocket. He leaned over, took aim, and let it fall.
The quarter sailed past the smoking man on eight and kept falling until the sixth floor when it veered off and chimed against a railing. For a tiny coin, it made quite a racket once it started hitting the long metal tubes of the railings and hard concrete steps.
The man ditched his cigarette, unshouldered his gun, and began clomping down the steps.
Dale pulled open the door to ten and found the back of a chest of drawers. He spun a look over his shoulder to Lauren, but she gave no explanation. Guess Mom didn’t use the back stairs much. Might as well put furniture right in front of it. Not like the fire marshal is coming out for inspections anytime soon.
